All scientists wear white lab coats.

Chemical and biotechnology related apparatuses that bubble with colored liquids, vent steam (?) and spin away in the background for no particular reason.

Bunsen burners being used with a huge, rippling orange-yellow flame. That's not how they're used. The gas is supposed to be turned until it's a blue jet.

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If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

Eh, I'll take a carbon steel blade with no sound effects over an aluminum or plastic-bladed one with any day.

__________________
If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

edit: my post had nothing to do with the thread...sorry.

Every cliche that grabs your attention as an obvious cliche gets on my nerves...but how come every super-bad-guy, or gun-toting-hero has to have a Desert Eagle handgun?

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~Brad - Astropaparazzo
http://signaturedigitalimages.com

Overcompensation.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Generally its in movies aimed at they psyche of a 13-year old boy (regardless of the age of the body that psyche is in...). Big guns=... well, this is a family forum. The whole thing is very freudian and I'm sure film studies students have a field day with it in their dissertations.

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"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive." - Carl Sagan, 1995

Ah yes, the famous "Desert Anchor" fishing weight...If you have not shot one, you do not know what a thrill you are missing, (Muzzle Blast, Recoil and Flip....) The .50 AE costs over a $1.00 a shot....Weighs a ton, and costs a fortune....other than that, a really good gun! (For movie prop departments!)

Dale in Ala

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"Ad astra per aspera"

For the same reason Conan has a huge sword.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Movies where they are wearing full armour but neglect to top it all off with a helmet leaving their heads exposed so you can tell who's who.

Movies where the hero gets shot, and it looks like he's done for, but then it's okay because it turns out he's wearing a bullet proof vest. And then the hero goes and takes the vest off for some reason even though he's still in the middle of a firefight. I mean, I know the manufacturers say a vest should be replaced after it stops a bullet, but I don't think there's any need to be in such a hurry.

How about war movies were the rank is clearly marked on the helmets, I know the people on the same side have to know whos in change but it is just telling the otherside who to shot first.

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If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

I disagree with about half of that. The recoil isn't that bad. I'd rate it similar to .45 auto (but then, I was raised around stuff that probably made me a bit more insensitive to recoil than most). The Desert Eagle is gas operated and has a locking bolt like a rifle. They are a very high quality handgun that would be almost impossible to hurt unless you did something stupid with it. That said, they are too big for the average person to get their hand around. They are definitely heavy, and the amount of respect I had for them when they first came out was mostly lost when I saw the gold-chrome version. For a combat handgun, I wouldn't call it a good choice. For a hunting handgun, it's great. You can even get a sling for it. I'd never get one in .50 AE though, for the expense of the cases if nothing else.

It's way overused in movies because it looks scary, people know it's name and it's expensive enough that not many people will actually run into one. I look at their appearance in all those movies in the 90s in the same way I did butterfly knives in the 80s. Any movie with a 'scary guy' had that guy flip a butterfly knife around a little. Usually the hero would take it away and flip it closed as some sort "you're not so cool" snub or something.

That does remind me of one though. I'm watching "The Kill Box" on TV. It's sort of a miniseries about a team of ex-military that try to rob a bank and end up taking up refuge in it with hostages. The story deals with the planning and manipulation on both sides between John Leguizamo (Head bank robber) and Donnie Wahlburg (Negotiator). It's what 24 would be if not for the "real time" gimmick.

Anyway, there are two that are active in this show. He first is that this team of battle weary soldiers, fresh from three tours in Iraq decides to rob the bank each with a completely different weapon. Not only are the guns different, but the ammo is too. It's like the prop department had a list of the 5 coolest/scariest looking guns and went with one of each because they couldn't decide.

The other is sniper that are some sore of pseudo-zen masters that ask all sorts of philosophical questions about life and death to their spotters. I know a couple of police snipers. If they talked like that, they'd be on the rubber gun squad really fast.

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A Nerd can figure out how long it will take the original Enterprise traveling at warp 6.5 to travel from Regulus to Antares.
A Geek will think he can use that to pick up a girl in a bar.
A Dork knows he can't pick up the girl with it, but will hang around for hours anyway, just in case she asks.
She might. You never know.

That's because they're generally humanities majors. Unless they're writing about their humanity of choice they're not going to know what they're talking about, because they can't take the time to do a little research.

__________________
If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

My father was a policeman and one thing he used to say a lot was, "Where are all the suave killers I've seen in the movies? Every murderer I've ever met has always been a retarded bully who couldn't think his way out of a problem."

Of course as a smartass teen I'd reply, "'Cause those are the only ones you can catch, Dad."

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"The beauty of that discussion of averages is that you don't have to be an expert in Apollo or in photography in order to see where this time study "analysis" breaks down. You just have to be, well...not an idiot." -JayUtah

We just a fatal shooting in a park about a mile from where I work. Three guys came up to a parked car and started arguing with the guy in the car. One of the three pulled out a gun and shot him 6 or 8 times in the chest, then shot one if his buddies in the foot trying to tuck the gun back in his pants. The shooter was in custody withing 24 hours.

__________________
A Nerd can figure out how long it will take the original Enterprise traveling at warp 6.5 to travel from Regulus to Antares.
A Geek will think he can use that to pick up a girl in a bar.
A Dork knows he can't pick up the girl with it, but will hang around for hours anyway, just in case she asks.
She might. You never know.

All the main characters having a different gun is common to Action Movies, well I seem to see it time after time.

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

And all fighter pilots fly with their oxygen mask unfastened and all spacesuit helmets have lights inside the helmet.

For a low-tech version of that, consider "The Thirteenth Warrior". They originally started filming with something closer to real Viking armor, but some people complained that they couldn't tell who was who, so they started over with different characters wearing different types of stuff.

My sister has one, and I'd rate the recoil as quite a bit stiffer than a .45acp. We went shooting one time, my brother-in-law with his 9mm, my sister with her D.E., .44magnum, and me with my puny .45acp Colt Commander. I am firing at my target, two lanes over from my sister, when KABOOM! I see a jet of flame, a wave of heat come rushing over the top of the stall, and my target is waving from the pressure wave. I wait a few seconds for my target to settle down, I start firing...KABOOM! It starts over again, other shooters are coming over to see who is firing the flamethrower. It was great.

But as for it's use in movies, and tv, it is simple. It's big, it's shinny, and it shows up well on the screen. Hollywood likes big, and shiny.

It's the flavor of the day. Like the HK P7 in the 80s, the Glock in the 90s, and the FN P90 today.

David.

Ever see someone install the hammer of a .454 Casull into thier own foreheads? Doesn't sound too funny but the guy was told twice that it didn't matter how big he was, don't fire it one handed. Then it became funny.

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"The beauty of that discussion of averages is that you don't have to be an expert in Apollo or in photography in order to see where this time study "analysis" breaks down. You just have to be, well...not an idiot." -JayUtah

Anyone can learn from his own mistakes. Wisdom is learning from the mistakes of others. Your buddy wasn't very wise, was he? He did serve as a good (bad) example for others, so his act should've contributed to the wisdom of the group.